Life On Mars..?

[Chris Bates]

Keith A Henderson wrote:

> Chemical makeup is right on.  I just attended this past spring a lecture given
> by astronaut/geologist Harrison Schmitt (the last person to walk on the moon,
> or I should say the 'most recent').  Anyway, his talk was more about asteroids
> and meteorites and what we can learn about the solar system from them.

< interesting space stuff snipped >

> I don't know about the bacteria issue...there is certainly some bacteria/life
> in Antarctica, although buried in the ice there's probably very little.  But I
> wouldn't count this out as a contamination problem.  But I assume (or would
> hope) that these researchers have some clue that these organic molecules come
> from deep enough within the crystalline structure as to be authentic.  We'll
> have to wait and see.

Well from my semi-awake listening to the radio this a.m. I think it
works like this...

The meteorite hits Antarctica N years ago. The fossils of the primitive
lifeforms are greater than N years old so they must've been in the
meteorite when it landed. It probably didn't stop off on the way so the
lifeforms come from Mars.

Easy - anyone can do this astro-geology lark:-)

Of course if Fred Hoyle is right in his thories of the creation of life
as we know it, then the lifeforms could've come from elsewhere, landed
on Mars in a meteorite incident but were bounced from the Martian surface
to Earth by yet another meteorite. A sort of cosmic pool game!


Chris